


not the same

by FortySevens



Series: what you deserve [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Ghosts, Hurt/Comfort, Maria Castle plays matchmaker, Maria totally ships it, and helps her husband find his after, featuring a couple very subtle references to the MCU at large, post tps2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23513425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FortySevens/pseuds/FortySevens
Summary: “You know that you’re doing this to yourself because, deep down, there’s a part of you that thinks Billy was right. That this is all that you are now.”Maria Castle goes AWOL from the afterlife for a few hours.It’s for a good cause.
Relationships: Frank Castle/Karen Page, Frank Castle/Maria Castle
Series: what you deserve [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1691869
Comments: 29
Kudos: 101





	not the same

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I have no idea how this happened. I think I just woke up with the idea. You know how it goes ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯. I say the plot bunny hutch is full, and then give myself 888 more WIPs to work my way through.
> 
> Why do I do this to myself?
> 
> And yes, this is a part of a series. More to come.

_“Hey sleepyhead._ ”

Frank wakes with a jolt, chest heaving as he stares up at the ceiling of his glorified rat-trap of an apartment and tries to get his shit back together.

The dream was as hazy as ever—which is better than the ones that play out the crystal-clear reminder of how he got his family killed, but not by much. All the same, hearing Maria’s voice as he shifted from sleep to wake is as much of a painful strike as it is every time a bullet hits his vest.

He scrubs a palm over his face, the stubble on his jaw catching against the fine lines and calluses on his skin.

When his skittering heartbeat finally slows back to some semblance of normal, when the start-the-day fight-or-flight response finally eases off—one of the worst ways to wake up, _ever_ —Frank tears his gaze away from the cracked, humidity-stained ceiling and sits up to—

To the sight of his wife leaning against the wall on the other side of his bedroom.

Maria.

She’s right there, standing not four feet from him, wearing that gauzy white and blue dress from the last time he was with her, her hair falling in neat waves over her shoulders, and she’s— _she’s perfect_.

But this, this can’t be right.

Frank glances around his room, frowning hard as he does, because he’s only ever dreamed of Maria, of the good times together, of being separated when he was out on deployment, and of course, the nightmares—her dying at the carousel, the fever dream of her getting gunned down at the Lieberman’s, or in their bedroom.

He’s never dreamed of her in this apartment, this little-more-than-a-crash-pad that he’s been bunking down in since he took care of Billy, handled the Schultzes, and got the kid on a bus to Tampa.

Maria smiles, and Frank feels a little dizzy, because he’s _awake_ , he knows he is, and none of this makes sense.

“Hi Frank.”

Blinking a couple times, Frank shakes his head like that’s going to make the apparition in front of him disappear, but she doesn’t so much as flicker, “Maria? You’re—”

Her smile widens, “I’m right here.”

—

“I don’t understand,” Frank shakes his head again, but Maria is still there in front of him, smiling like this is just another day, and she’s just waiting for him to wake up so they can start their day. “Is this a dream?”

At that, Maria makes her away across the room, her feet making no sound against the shitty laminate floor next to his bed, but when she sits down, his mattress dips in her direction. She reaches out with that same hesitant care she used when he’s just back from deployment and acclimating to being back home, giving him time to stop her if he wanted to, but— _god_ , he never wants to stop her, and lets her cup his neck in her hand.

Her skin is warm, but when he wraps his shaking fingers around her wrist, he can’t feel a pulse, which sends more and more questions flickering to the forefront of his mind. But when he locks eyes with her, there’s just no way for him to make any of them come out.

Like she knows, which, she’s always been able to read him so, so well, she squeezes his neck the way she used to, pulls him against her, and he wraps his free arm around her waist and holds her tight.

“This is just as much a dream as the last time I saw you,” she murmurs against the side of his head, her nose buried there as she strokes her fingertips into the shaved-short hair at the nape of his neck. “That day you decided that you wanted to live.”

He goes still against her, guilt building deep in his chest at the realization that the day in the bunker, when he was being tortured halfway to death by Bill and Rawlins—

_Holy shit, that was real._

“Maria, god, I didn’t realize—I didn’t think that was—”

“No,” she cuts him off, soft but firm, fingertips digging into the nape of his neck to get his attention before she goes back to that same, rhythmic stroking. “I understand why you chose what you chose. You get to _help_ people Frank, and I am _so_ proud of you.”

“What I, Maria, it’s—it’s not—”

“I know,” she presses a kiss against his hairline. “I know you, and no matter what, I could not love you more. That’s _never_ going to change. No matter what choice you make, no matter what you do, nothing changes.”

Tears itch at the corners of his eyes, and Frank holds her tighter, buries his face in her neck, “I—”

But he can’t make the words come. To tell her that he never wanted this, not in a million years, but he doesn’t know how to let it go. That he _wanted_ to come home, to really be home like he said, all those years ago when he came back from Kandahar, but he can’t turn back on this either.

He could never be _this_ man, the one he is now, if Maria and the kids were still here.

And that _kills_ him.

Maria pulls back, but only enough so she can drop her forehead to his, “It does not matter to me, Frank,” she makes him meet her gaze when she tucks her thumb under the line of his jaw. “But you can’t keep punishing yourself for making this choice. I don’t want you isolating yourself like this anymore.”

Swallowing hard against the lump in his throat, Frank pulls back and grasps her other wrist, holds both her hands between them, “There’s shit that I’ve done—”

“To protect the people that you care about,” she says, firm, which is better than anything else he may have said, even if the justification almost makes him feel even more hollowed out than he already is, because none of those people he cares about—none of them are safe with him around.

It’s not punishing himself if staying away keeps them safe.

It’s _not_.

“What you do is harsh and it’s brutal and it’s never in a million years something I thought you’d have to do, something that I’d ever _want_ you to do—but it’s not a reason that you should be torturing yourself every single day. You _can’t_ keep living like this.”

“Maria—”

She cuts him off again with a firm shake of her head, her soft hair brushing against his face with the force of it, “You know that you’re doing this to yourself because, deep down, there’s a part of you that thinks Billy was right. That this is all that you are now.”

“Maria, I am—”

She breaks the gentle grip he has on her wrists and cups his face in her hands, “No. You’re not. You are not the same,” she says with that fire in her eyes that he’s missed so goddamn much. “You have never been. What he did to us, to you—Frank, you need to stop punishing yourself for all the things that _he_ did that you feel responsible for. None of it was your fault.”

It’s something he’d never admit to in the light of day, but in the long months since putting Bill in the ground—he’s exhausted. So fucking exhausted.

Every day, it’s a new asshole to kill, and they pop up left, right and fucking center—Hell’s Kitchen is just _steeped_ in this shit.

And doing this shit, day after day after day, it’s so much more exhausting than he thought it would be.

And hell, he knew it wasn’t going to be a walk in the fucking park, but it’s the path he picked.

He chose this.

Chose the war.

“I’m too far down this road.”

Maria grips the back of his head, shakes him gently, “No you’re not. Do you really think I’d be here if you were?”

She’s firm, so completely and totally resolute, like it really is as easy as she says it is, and it reminds him so goddamn much of—

_No_.

He’s not going to go there.

He’s not going to think about her.

Not here, not now. Not after what he did to her.

Frank just sighs, drops his head back down to Maria’s shoulder, because it’s really a moot point, no matter what she thinks, “So what,” he mutters against her. “Are you going to haunt me for the rest of my days? Make sure I stay on the straight and narrow?”

“No, this is a one-time thing,” she runs her thumb back and forth over the scar on his forearm, the one he did that bad stitch-job on the night he had Red in chains up on that rooftop. “I can’t talk much about, you know, what comes next, but uh—in the afterlife, I met a very powerful witch, Frigga. She helped me, so I could come see you.”

“And the babies?” He asks, lifting his head and glancing around like Lisa and Frankie are about to pop in from the other room.

But the look on Maria’s face tells him that’s not about to happen, and he drops his head back to her shoulder, “They’re safe,” she runs her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. “And they’re happy. We’re _okay_ , Frank.”

“I’d rather you be happy and okay here with me.”

The hand in his hair falters, just for a moment, before Maria holds him even tighter, “I know. Me too.”

—

He doesn’t know how long they sit there, together on his bed and sharing space, but eventually the rumbling in his stomach gets both their attention. Maria pulls back, even as Frank tries to tug her closer, “Come on, you need to eat something.”

Frank grumbles, but Maria slips out of his grasp, grabs his jeans from the haphazard pile he left them in last night, and tosses them on the bed, “Come on, up you get.”

She sounds just like she used to when she’d have to drag Frankie out of bed for school on Monday mornings, and something in him just _breaks_.

Kicking away the sheets, Frank bolts to his feet, grabs Maria by the waist before she can go anywhere, and tugs her against his chest. She squeals in surprise—just like she used to when he’d get the drop on her, back when life was a hell of a lot more _fun_ —and she braces her hands on his shoulders as he cups her cheek and captures her mouth with his.

_Fuck_ , the last time he did this, he thought—he _knew_ —he was hallucinating.

He kisses her slow and deep, like he’s drowning, and he’s been dying for this.

Far too soon, Maria pulls back, thumbs stroking his cheekbones. She shifts up and kisses his nose, the space between his brows, and then his forehead, “I love you so much,” she whispers against his skin.

Frank digs his hand into the curls at the nape of her neck, “I love you. That’s not going to change, ever.”

“And I don’t expect it to,” she drops back to her heels, thumbs still stroking over and over the thin scars on his cheeks. “That’s not what this is about.”

He frowns at that, but Maria just pats his cheek before letting him go, her hand trailing over his shoulder before she leaves him to get dressed, drifting into the rest of his apartment.

“Frank, seriously,” she admonishes when he meets her in the living room/kitchen combo. “This place is a pit.”

“It’s a place to sleep.”

She turns her glare away from the stains on the wall next to the microscopic refrigerator, and it’s sharp enough to slice straight through his chest, “Get a better one.”

Frank meets her gaze, and after a second, he nods.

Looks like he’s going to have to go apartment hunting after this.

He doesn’t keep much in his kitchen—these days, he mostly just subsists off diner food, coffee, and protein bars—but he does have enough to throw some eggs and oatmeal together, which Maria only scowls at a little.

Yeah, yeah, he knows he can do better.

“So, what do we do now?”

Maria reaches across the island between them, strokes her hand down his cheek, “I want you to take me somewhere,” she says, that impish little smirk twisting her mouth, telling him he’s about to get into some _shit_. “There’s that friend of yours. I want to meet her.”

He doesn’t have to ask who she means, breaks from her gaze with a sigh and focuses on the way his trigger finger twitches against the countertop, “Maria,” he can’t look at her _and_ think back to that day in the hospital. “I—I shouldn’t. I _can’t_.”

“You should, you can, and you _are_ ,” Maria insists. “I’m not letting you avoid this any longer than you already have, Frank. You _deserve_ it.”

“It’s not about what I deserve,” he shakes his head when he sees her try to cut in. “It’s not, not this time. I can’t take back the things that I said. Not with her.”

Maria rounds the counter, takes his hands, “Even if you couldn’t, which you and I both know is _bullshit_ , you’re still going to take me to meet her, and you’re going to make things right.”

It’s really not going to be as easy as she thinks it’s going to be, but he also knows his wife, and he’s not going to be able to get around this. So he sighs, finally nods, “Okay.”

“Good,” she squeezes his hands, and then lets him go. “Now come on, we don’t have all day.”

—

It’s a nice day, too goddamn nice of a day for him to be pulling a move like this, but he does as Maria says and takes her across town from the shithole he lives in, to the building that houses the offices of _Nelson,_

_Murdock & Page_.

He wants to be here as much as he really, _really_ doesn’t, especially after he saw the look on Maria’s face when he told her he knew exactly where to go.

This, all of this, has been so much today, and now—

But if there is anything Maria does deserves, it is to meet Karen, the person who got him off his ass and helped him clear his head—helped him remember and made him realize that he _had_ to figure out what happened to his family.

He wouldn’t be where he is right now, not without Karen.

Even so, it’s almost impossible to reconcile with the idea of Maria and Karen occupying the same space.

He doesn’t know how this is going to go.

And it scares the ever-living _shit_ out of him.

They stop on the other side of the street, and Frank leans back against the brick exterior of some long-shuttered laundromat.

“You know, I ain’t walking in there,” he says under his breath, pointing in the direction of the door with a rough jerk of his chin. “So, what are we going to do, sit around here and wait all afternoon for someone to notice?”

It won’t take that long, if Red’s around, but the likelihood that he’s actually going to tell Karen that he’s here?

Fucking non-existent.

But Maria just smirks as she settles next to him, slips her hand into his and tangles their fingers together, “It’s not going to be that complicated.”

He arches a brow in askance, but her smirk just deepens.

Seconds later, sunlight glints across the front door to the office building as it opens, and—

There’s Karen.

Right on time.

He probably shouldn’t have tried to question Maria. It’s an old lesson he almost forgot not to forget.

_Maria Castle is_ always _right._

Shifting off the building at his back, Frank lifts his free hand to get Karen’s attention, but it’s not necessary. She sees them the second she clears the door, like somehow Maria knew exactly how to position them so they’d get her attention.

Hell, she probably did.

Even from across the street, Frank sees the emotions flicker across Karen’s face—confusion, disappointment, and then wide-eyed shock, when she realizes exactly who’s standing next to him. All the same, it doesn’t last long before she squares her shoulders and crosses the street.

“Oh, I _do_ like her,” Maria murmurs from her spot by his shoulder, squeezing his fingers before sliding them out of his suddenly shaky grip.

This is, hands down, the weirdest moment of his entire life.

When Karen makes it to their side of the street, it’s even easier to see the way Karen’s brows have knit together in confusion, and honestly, _he gets it_.

“Um,” Karen looks between them like she doesn’t have a clue what’s happening in front of her. “Hi?”

“Hi,” he manages, but there’s really—

There is no way he can find the words to explain any of this.

But, of course, that’s why Maria’s here.

“Hi Karen,” she says, and he can hear the size of the smile in her voice, but he can’t bring himself to look away from Karen, which is—also not something he can afford to think too closely about right now. “I’m Maria. Maria Castle.”

“I’ve seen your autopsy report,” she blurts, before clapping her palm to her mouth with a little squeal, her pale cheeks flushing bright in the sunshine. “I mean—” she breaks off again, her wide-eyed gaze meeting his. “What the fuck, _how_?”

He shrugs, because he barely gets it either, “She bullied her way into getting a hall pass.”

It’s insane, but _fuck_ , he’s _so_ proud of her.

“A witch named Frigga helped me,” Maria explains, because she’s so goddamn smart, and knows Karen would need _some_ kind of explanation that she can dig into later. “Frank and I needed to have a long-overdue conversation.”

At that, Frank can’t help but roll his eyes, and he shrugs one shoulder when Karen looks from him to Maria and back, like this is just some kind of inside joke.

“And I also wanted the chance to meet you.”

Karen swallows hard, “ _Oh._ Well, uh— _hi_.”

“Hi,” Maria laughs, stepping forward and wrapping Karen in a hug.

It’s almost impossible, how much wider Karen’s eyes get, and she stands frozen in Maria’s arms for a moment, before she slowly reciprocates the hug, almost like she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do with her hands.

Frank’s sure Karen didn’t expect Maria to be completely corporeal, either.

“Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for Frank, all these years,” Maria says as she pulls back, grabs one of Karen’s hands in both of hers. “I can’t tell you how much Lisa and Frankie and I appreciate it.”

The shift Karen goes through from shock to resolve is immediate—her jaw ticks, and Frank knows that look all too well, from the both of them.

She looks down at her and Maria’s tangled hands before her bright blue gaze pierces into him, “It was the right thing to do.”

It takes everything in him not to flinch, because he still barely deserves half of the shit Karen’s done on his behalf.

And especially not setting off the fire alarm and sacrificing her shoes, the last time he saw her, months and months ago.

“And yet, not many people would have gone to the lengths you have,” Maria’s tone shifts to righteous anger. “So many people who have just taken the easy way out, so many people _did_ take the easy way out. I appreciate that you didn’t, I really do.”

Frank feels his ears go dark and hot, and his gaze falls to the tops of his boots, because he can’t bring himself to look either woman in the eye, and the fact that Maria _and_ Karen are right there in front of him, talking about him like he’s not even there, it’s—

This is _so much_.

Too much.

“I don’t like it when people in positions of power use others as cannon fodder,” Karen says, almost a growl. “All because of greed and overblown ambition.”

“You’ve done a good thing,” he can hear Maria’s smile grow, even as she speaks. “A lot of good things. I’m glad Frank has you.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he glances up in time to see Karen’s jaw tick again before she looks away, but he can see the brightness in her cheeks all the same.

He also knows she’s not happy about it.

And that’s his fault.

Maria picks up on it too, of course she does, and she shakes her head, “You two,” she says, fond, and one hand slides off Karen’s to grab his. She looks up at him, one brow quirking toward her hairline. “I can see why you like her.”

It’s like Maria is _trying_ to torture him right now.

The look on her face tells him that she knows that _he_ knows exactly what she’s trying to pull, and that fondness in her eyes just grows in a way he’ll _never_ understand, not for him, and especially not for the man he’s become since she’s been gone.

Maria draws him away from his thoughts with a squeeze to his fingers, “You know what I’m going to tell you, right, Frank?”

Even as he nods, his jaw ticks, because this is _such_ an over-simplification that Maria can’t possibly understand—out of the corner of his eye, he sees Karen shift a little nervously from foot to foot.

“Good,” all of a sudden, Maria’s smile slips, just a little bit, and she tilts her head in the direction of some unheard sound. “It’s that’s time.”

_Fuck_.

He doesn’t want her to go.

But that’s a choice that was taken from him a long, long time ago.

Letting go of Karen’s hand, Maria leans up on her toes and kisses Frank’s cheek, “The kids and I are not going to see you for a very, very long time, do you understand me?”

He _really_ doesn’t want to think about that.

“Yeah sweetheart,” he says anyway. “I hear you.”

A bright smile breaks across Maria’s face—one of his favorites, even if it breaks his heart a little to see it, to know that this is probably the last time that he does get to see it. She reaches up, pats his cheek before slipping her palm from his, sweeping Karen up in another hug. He watches Maria whisper something in her ear, and Karen goes bright red and winces a little, lets out a pained laugh before she squeezes her eyes shut and nods.

“It was really nice to meet you, Karen,” Maria says, loud enough for him to hear this time, and she steps away. “Thank you again.”

Karen nods once, jerkily, looking like she has no idea where she’s supposed to look, what she’s supposed to do, “Yeah,” she manages through what Frank knows is a tightness in her throat, the same he feels in his own. “You too.”

Maria looks back up at him, and Frank cups her neck, tugs her in and presses his mouth to her hairline, “Tell the babies I love them, yeah?”

“They already know, but I’ll tell them anyway,” he can see tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, and his heart breaks. “I’ll see you Frank.”

Maria takes a steadying breath before turning around, her dress flowing around her legs as she walks away. He watches her turn the corner, and he knows that even if he tried to go after her, she’d be long gone.

Back to wherever it is—wherever people go next.

He stares off into the distance where Maria disappeared to anyway, and if this truly is the last time he gets to see her, to talk to her, to love her, then this is—this is the best thing he could have ever asked for.

And certainly not something he’d ever imagine a piece of shit like him would ever get.

Karen makes a sound in the back of her throat, caught somewhere between confusion and pain, and when he pulls his gaze away from that stretch of empty sidewalk, it’s to her brushing tears from her eyes.

And even with everything whirling through his mind, he knows he wants nothing more than to close the space between them, to take her in his arms and comfort her, but he also knows he doesn’t have the right to do that, not now.

“Uh,” he clears his throat around the emotion and pain he feels, scrubs one hand over the back of his neck. “Hi.”

She looks at him, eyes going wide, before she claps her palm back over her mouth to choke back a laugh. She shakes her head, “Hi Frank,” she murmurs, like this is one of the most absurd things that’s happened to her in her entire life, which—it probably is.

There’s so much to say, so much he _wants_ to tell her—a million apologies he needs to make, too—but he has no fucking clue where to start.

Fortunately, Karen does what she does best and pushes forward in spite of the insanity, “So, uh, that was—”

She interrupted by the insistent chime coming from her purse, and Karen sighs, tugs her phone from its depths, frown deepening when she sees the caller ID, “It’s Matt. I should—just one second,” she accepts the call and taps the screen to put in on speaker, which is an interesting decision, but he’ll take it. “Yeah, Matt?”

“ _Karen—that woman with Frank, she doesn’t have a heartbeat, a smell. I don’t—_ ”

Karen rolls her eyes before she turns a glare in the direction of the building she came out of, “It’s not my story to tell, Matt. You don’t need to worry.”

“ _Worry? Karen, you’re standing out in the open with Frank Castle,_ ” they both hear Foggy yelp ‘ _she’s doing what?_ ’ in the background of the call, and Frank snorts back a laugh. “ _Hold on a second Foggy—Karen, you have to—”_

“The only thing I have to do is tell you I’m not going to be in for the rest of the day,” she says, firm, and like this is a conversation that she and Red have had more than once. “Please don’t follow us. I’ll see you Monday.”

Without giving him a chance to respond, she hangs up and decisively drops her phone back in her purse, “So,” she tries again, glances up one side of the street and down the other, hesitating a little. “We should probably talk about this, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” the look of surprise on her face at his agreement sends a pang through his chest.

Because yeah, he gets it, there’s probably a part of her—a big one—that thought he was just going to walk away, now that Maria’s gone.

But he doesn’t want to.

He doesn’t.

“My place?” Karen offers after hesitating another moment, and Frank nods, because there’s nowhere else to talk about this, and he sure as shit doesn’t want her coming back to his heap of an apartment.

An apartment that he’s going to have to vacate, lest he risk another haunting.

Sure, it would be nice to see Maria again, but he doesn’t want to get greedy—and he also doesn’t want her to get into any kind of otherworldly trouble.

Karen nods once, like she’s making some kind of decision about him—one of many that she’s made over the years—and then gestures up the block like he doesn’t know that’s the way to her apartment.

Glancing over his shoulder, he sees a shadow in the doorway Karen emerged from, and the chance it’s anyone but Red is slim, so he waves over his shoulder before following Karen up the street.

He looks back at her, and sees the roll of her eyes and the mostly amused shake of her head as she tugs her purse higher up on her shoulder.

Look, he _knows_ he’s an asshole—and Karen knows that too.

At least he and Red don’t actively beat up on each other anymore?

—

Look, Frank doesn’t mean to fall asleep the second he drops onto Karen’s couch, but somewhere between that and her padding into the kitchen to make coffee, he closes his eyes for a moment and is out like a light.

It’s been a weird enough day that he doubts she blames him for it.

He wakes at some point later—the sun slanting on the opposite side of the room from when they came in—groggy and disoriented, but also more comfortable than he’s been in a long, long time.

This is a damn nice couch.

“Hey.”

Scrubbing a palm over his face, Frank tilts his head, finds Karen curled up on the other end of the couch, her laptop propped on her crossed legs.

“If you’re wondering if what happened today actually happened—either you and I are sharing a joint psychosis, or Maria really did manage to take a break from the afterlife to come visit us,” the way she says it, it’s like she can barely believe those words are coming out of her mouth.

Which— _really._

With a sigh, Frank scrubs his palm over his face again, “And what do you think?”

She turns her laptop around, shows him the biography of Frigga that she must have been reading while he was zonked out, “Well, if there’s anyone who could be powerful enough to break the barrier—or whatever it is between where we are, and where we go next, it would be her, I think.”

Frank leans in a little and scans what’s on the webpage—it’s a lot of mythology, and there’s a large part of him that wants to dive into it at some point, “Yeah,” he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Probably.”

There’s really not much else to say.

“I-uh,” Karen hesitates a little, then shakes her head and moves forward with whatever else she has to say. “I have a contact with the Avengers from my days at The Bulletin—Darcy Lewis. She’s on their PR team, and she’s actually friends with Thor. I can ask her to have him look into it, if you want?”

“I don’t think so,” he finally answers after a good minute or two of thinking about it, staring off into the distance in the vague direction of the windowsill where the white roses used to rest. “Maria said it was a one-time deal. I think we should leave it at that.”

“You sure?”

It finally occurs to him where exactly he’s looking, and he tears his gaze away from the spot and nods, “Yeah,” he looks at Karen for a second, then glances away again. “I don’t think it’s something we’re supposed to look into. We shouldn’t mess with it.”

“Okay.”

They sit in silence for a couple minutes, and then Karen laughs and shakes her head, “This might actually take the lead on the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me, and that includes seeing aliens fall out of the sky above Stark Tower, and getting kidnapped by immortality-obsessed ninjas,” she turned toward him, tilts her head. “You want a beer?”

Fuck, he really, really does.

—

Beers in hand, they back on opposite sides of her couch again, drinking in a silence that’s only half-comfortable.

And it’s one hundred percent his fault.

“I have a question,” Karen says out of nowhere.

He grunts around another sip of beer, “Yeah?”

“Of all the things you two could have done today,” she snorts when he arches a brow, but doesn’t elaborate further— _thank god_. “Why did you come to my office?”

“You saved my life,” because there is no other truth than that. Karen Page has saved his life more times than he can count, more times than she probably even knows. “So, she wanted to meet you.”

“Oh,” she looks down at the bottle propped on her knee, peels at the sweat-soaked label. “I’m sorry.”

His brows hike to his hairline, “The hell are you apologizing for?”

“I’m just—I’m sure it’s impossible to say no to someone like that, even if it’s doing something,” she breaks off, take a long sip and swipes the back of her hand over her mouth before finishing. “Something that you don’t want to do.”

_God_ , he really fucked things up.

One goddamn lie, and everything gets sent into a tailspin.

His trigger finger starts to twitch, and Karen watches closely as he presses down on it with his other hand, “Look, Karen, I—”

He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to say this—what the right words are to _fix_ this mess he made.

“I can’t take back the things that I said, that day in the hospital,” he says, feeling the way Karen flinches at the reminder like a strike to the chest. He leans forward to leave his beer on the coffee table, turns to face her and stretches his arm across the back, toward where she’s sitting, but nowhere close enough. “Even though I want to.”

Well, now it’s out there.

Karen angles her body toward him too, her lips pursing together so hard they go white, “We don’t lie to each other, Frank, so don’t you go about trying to make me feel better about—”

“I did lie.”

Her jaw drops, and she lets out a noise that—it sounds like she’s been wounded, and she claps a hand over her mouth.

“Bill was so goddamn unhinged, trying to get to me any way he could,” including a couple ways that he _did_ that Maria made abundantly clear he’s still reeling from—fuck, he needs _so_ much therapy. “I was not going to let him try to use you against me. It would have ended bloody, and I wouldn’t have been able to survive that, Karen. Hell, I barely did manage to get out on the other side of this with what’s left of my sanity intact.”

“Frank—”

“I should have told you that a long time ago,” he sighs, scrubs a hand over his eyes. “And I’m sorry I waited too long.”

From behind her palm, he hears her sniff, and she shakes her head, “Not too long.”

Something breaks in his chest and it almost feels like relief.

Slowly, Karen drops her hand away from her mouth, stretches it across the back of the couch and settles so her fingertips brush against his.

It’s like a jolt runs through his entire body from that delicate point of contact, and he can’t look away from their fingertips.

“What’s going through your mind, Frank?”

Karen’s quiet question jolts him out of the buzzing that’s taken up residence in the back of his mind from her touch, and it could have been seconds, maybe even minutes since it started.

“I just,” he shrugs one shoulder helplessly, to give him time to find the words, but even the ones he settles on don’t feel quite right. “I got to hold my wife today. And shit, she kicked my ass.”

But he also knows that Karen will understand what he really means.

A fond smile breaks across her face, and he knows she’s thinking back to that night at the diner, when he was so emphatic about Karen holding onto what he thought was someone she loved, which—turns out that was not even close.

He still used it as a smokescreen anyway, used it for so long.

It’s like night and day, from then to now.

In some ways, they’ve come so far.

In others, well, maybe not so much.

And that’s mostly his fault.

But he’s here, in her apartment and sitting on her couch, so he has to make that mean something.

He _wants_ to make it mean something.

She presses her fingertips against his, strengthening their connection for a moment, “And you didn’t even have to chop your arm off.”

Frank shakes his head at the callback to that night in the diner, and he wants nothing more to—

Well, he wants a lot.

But this is also a lot. It’s a lot, and it’s all happening so, so fast.

Too fast for just one day.

Pressing back against her fingers, he breaks the connection when he turns and props his elbows on his knees, scrubs his hands into his hair, “It’s been a long day.”

With a tilts of his head, he sees Karen nod in understanding of everything he didn’t say—he got to kiss his wife today, and now she’s gone and he’s here with her.

“I know,” she scoffs a laugh when it hits her what she said. “I mean, fuck, no, I don’t. I have no clue what that even means for you, for anyone who gets thrown into something like this, but I don’t want you to think you have to—”

“Can I come over tomorrow? Make you dinner?”

Her eyes go a little wide at the interruption, and she looks at him for a long time, nods once, and then again, “Yes, yeah—you can. If you want to.”

“I do want to.”

He meets her gaze, doesn’t look away, because there’s something about the look in her eye, but finally, she nods, “Okay.”

His brow ticks, “Okay?”

Her nose crinkles when she laughs, and she runs a hand through the fall of her hair, which—he would very much like to do that too.

“Yeah, okay.”

—

When he gets to Karen’s door the next night, a couple bags of groceries hanging off one arm, it doesn’t shock him to see the surprise on her face that he’s there, that he actually showed up.

He has a lot to make up for, to get her to trust him again—Karen trusts him with her life, sure, that hasn’t changed, but its’s the rest of it that he has to work on.

Like her heart.

He’s making her way through Karen’s kitchen, throwing together their dinner while she handles the bottle of wine he brought over. She’s struggling with the cork when her phone starts vibrating on the coffee table, and she leaves the bottle on the counter to check it—he watches her glance down at it, heave a sigh, and then grab it and turn it off.

“Everything all right?”

Karen tosses the phone back on the table, and the sharp clatter echoes through the relative quiet in her apartment, “It’s just Matt. Don’t worry about it.”

He snorts and turns back to the chicken sizzling in the pan in front of him, “Surprised Red didn’t try to follow me home last night, read me the riot act.”

With a huff, Karen makes her way back to the bottle of wine, “Well, I told him not to. He’s been better at respecting my boundaries since he made his _miraculous_ return from the dead,” she says that with ten tons of sarcasm, and he makes a mental note to ask her about what happened later.

He has a feeling it’s a story he’s not going to like.

But that’s for later.

“Yeah? And how many times has he called you since he saw us yesterday?”

The cork pops free, and Karen makes a happy sound of accomplishment that bleeds into a low laugh, “I said he’s been better, not perfect.”

She pours herself a generous glass—which tells him exactly how many times Red tried to call her today—and then hands him one that’s just as full. Frank leaves it on the counter next to the stove, cups his hand around her elbow and tugs her to his side, slides his arm around her waist.

With a small sound of surprise, Karen settles against him and tucks her forehead against his jaw, and he turns them both so he can prod at the chicken one-handed.

“Honestly,” she adds around a long sip of wine. “It’s not even about you.”

He snorts at that, and Karen shakes her head against him, “Okay, so it’s a little about you, but mostly, he’s just still confused about Maria.”

“She’s always had that effect on people.”

Karen laughs, and fuck, he loves that—that he _has_ someone to laugh about the good memories of his wife with.

And it’s _Karen_.

That really helps.

“I’m sure she did,” she pauses, grabs one of the carrots from the bowl of chopped vegetables next to the stove, waiting to be thrown in with the chicken. “But I’m not going to explain that to him. It’s not my story to tell.”

Frank squeezes her, turns and brushes his mouth against her hairline, holds there even as she goes still against him, “Thank you,” he murmurs against her skin.

There’s a quiet hitch in her breath before she relaxes more of her weight into his side, slides her arm around his waist and curls her fingers around the hem of his thermal.

He could get used to this.

—

They end up back on the couch after dinner, but without the same space as yesterday—Karen has her bent knees pressed up against his thigh, and he has his hand on the small of her back, absently stroking up and down the length of her spine.

It’s warm, it’s quiet, the television is on low, sending flickers of blueish light around the room, and there’s a part of him that’s sure he’s going to fall asleep again.

“Frank?”

“Yeah?”

He glances down, sees her toying with the hem of her sweater, and he shakes her gently with the hand on her back, “What is it?”

She huffs a breath, almost in frustration, shakes her head a little, “If this isn’t okay to ask, you don’t have to tell me,” she pushes a hand through her hair, shoving the shining mass over one shoulder. “But—I was wondering, before she left, when Maria said, _you know what I’m going to tell you_ , what did she mean?”

He could so easily deflect, to tell her that it was nothing.

But he won’t.

Because it’s _everything_.

Tugging on her legs, Frank pulls her across his lap, wraps his arm tighter around her waist and buries his other hand in the fall of her hair like he’s been dying to for days, for weeks, since the day _Nelson & Murdock_ brow-beat his drugged-up ass into letting them take on his case.

He closes his eyes on a sigh at the memory of everything they’ve gone through since they met, then opens them, meeting her piercing gaze.

“She meant,” he breaks off, swallowing hard at the lump forming in his throat, because he wants it to be as easy as Maria said it would be, but it’s _not_. “Fuck, this might be way too goddamn soon, and way too goddamn much to put on you, but what she meant was, she was going to say—”

He breaks off again, and when Karen lifts her hand to his cheek, he turns into it, presses his lips to her palm and scrapes together the courage to say, “She was going to say that it’s okay for me to love you too.”

Her fingers twitch against his cheek, and he feels the way she falters on an indrawn breath, “ _Frank_.”

“You should have known I was full of shit, that day in the hospital.”

Karen huffs a wry laugh, tips her forehead to his, “I knew,” she says, barely a whisper, her thumb tracing back and forth over his jawline. “But I also knew I wasn’t going to change your mind.”

“I have to keep you safe, Karen. That’s always going to be a priority for me.”

Her eyes flitter shut, and she presses harder against his forehead, “I don’t just want you in my life as my protector, Frank. That’s not how this is going to work.”

Frank nods, his nose brushing against hers, “I know.”

It would be so easy to kiss her right now, just a tiny tilt of his head, and he wants to—god, he’s wanted to for so long—so, he does.

Karen sighs into the kiss and almost seems to melt against him. He can taste the relief on her tongue, the _fucking finally, this is actually happening_ that he knows she’s thinking. With the hand still buried in the fall of her hair, he tilts her head so he can deepen the kiss, tongue stroking against hers. She breaks away with a low keening sound and Frank buries his face against her throat, kisses up her neck to nip at her jaw.

He jolts against her when the hand on his cheek slides into his hair and she gives him a sharp tug, and he touches his forehead back to hers, catches his breath, finds with no shortage of satisfaction that she’s right there in the same boat with him.

“Too much?” He asks once he gets his breathing back under control.

Darting back in to kiss him once, quick, Karen runs her short nails through the stubble on his jawline, “Definitely not,” she murmurs, giggling—a sound he rarely gets to hear from her, but he’d kill to hear it again—when he nuzzles his nose against hers. “It’s just—you’re staying, right?”

It’s such a loaded question, could mean so many things—he’s not sure he knows how to answer her yet.

So he kisses her again instead.

It’s answer enough, for now.

—

Later, much later, they’ve found their way to Karen’s bed, which is—

So much more comfortable than just her couch. Sturdier too.

His breathing is finally, finally evening out again, and he’s settled on his back, Karen tucked up against his side, soft and warm and absently tracing the scars scattered across his chest.

She brushes her hand over a scar he picked up years ago, long, long before Kandahar—when he was back from deployment and they were in the process of moving into their new house.

Frank finds himself telling the story—probably thanks to a combination of the protective blanket of darkness shrouded over Karen’s bedroom and the endorphins running through his blood. Frankie was a toddler at the time, and while Maria was helping Lisa settle into her bedroom, the little boy had gotten into the box he was unpacking—full of flatware, including his set of chef’s knives. Frankie lost his balance and ended up sticking Frank in the side before he could get the knife out of his hands.

“It’s one of my favorite scars, actually.”

Karen’s nose crinkles when she laughs, and it makes him feel light in a way he hasn’t in a long, long time.

It also makes him think back to the day before, and what Maria whispered to her before she had to leave.

Part of him thinks he shouldn’t ask, but the rest of him—

He can’t quite help himself.

“What did Maria say to _you_?”

Even in the dark, he can see how Karen flushes bright red, all the way down to her chest. She laughs under her breath, leans up and thumbs over his cheekbone, “She acknowledged just how fucking weird this all is, you know, her basically giving me permission to sleep with her husband. And um,” she purses her lips and then leans in, kisses him quick. “She also thanked me for being patient with you.”

His arm tightens around her, fingers stroking the dimples on either side of her spine, “You didn’t have to.”

“It wasn’t about me waiting for you, Frank. You just showed up at the right time. A little past the right time, maybe,” she says with a teasing poke to his chest. “But you figured it out.”

“I needed a little help,” and then he adds, because it’s late and he’s halfway to sleep and other than that one time, he’s never been anything but honest with her. “Probably wouldn’t have gotten here without the push.”

Karen’s face twists a little like she’s smelled something bad, before she wraps her arm tighter around him, pillows her head on his shoulder,“I know.”

“But I—I _do_ want to stay.”

While he settles deeper into the pillow he absconded with, Karen hikes one knee over his hip, and he can feel her breathing evening out against him, “Then stay.”

Apparently, it _is_ that easy.

After all, Maria Castle is _always_ right.

**Author's Note:**

> More to come...at some point in the future.


End file.
